


Method In't

by inlovewithnight



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-10
Updated: 2010-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Method In't

"This is the kind of bad idea that _I_ would come up with," Oliver says, pacing back and forth at the edge of Geoffrey's vision, along the far wall of Jack's dressing room. "I hope you know what you're doing, Geoffrey."

He does—he's carrying out an idea that came to him fully formed, one that struck him flat in the center of his chest and sent him off in the blithe certainty that it was something that _must_ be done. Like when he picked up those foils and went after Darren. And probably the fact that _this_ comes from the same part of his mind as _that_ means that it _is_ a bad idea, perhaps even a terrible idea, and yet he's quite certain that he's going to carry it out anyway.

"Hey, man," Jack says gently, looking down at Geoffrey's hand gripping his shoulder, "it's not that I have a problem with that, but me and Kate, we're sorta—"

"I know about that. It isn't about that." He knows Jack and Kate are fucking, he'd know it even if they both stood in front of him and swore on the text that they weren't. He'd be surprised if they weren't. Shocked, perhaps just this side of appalled.

"You'd _tell_ them to," Oliver mutters, rolling his eyes.

It's only natural for any Hamlet to fuck his Ophelia; more than natural, it's _honest_. He won't go so far as to say that it's _necessary_, but there's really no way it can hurt. Whether the relationship goes well or badly, there's a place they can use it in the play.

"You know?" Jack's eyebrows dart up toward his hairline. It's a sharp reaction, a dramatic reaction, an _actor's_ reaction, and it's the sort of thing that slips past the detached, American-and-Hollywood-at-that, indifferent demeanor from time to time and cued Geoffrey to the fact that there was a Hamlet inside this kid worth coaxing out. "Well, if you know about me and Kate, then why are you…"

"This isn't _about_ that," Geoffrey repeats, using every strand of the actor he used to be to project his urgency. It is essential that Jack believe him. Imperative. More important than convincing any doctor of his sanity, or any lover of his sincerity, or any audience of what they saw. And it's that last comparative that defines the importance of this, in Geoffrey's mind. He _must_ do this, or…

Well, he isn't sure, exactly, what will happen, but it won't be good. It might be the end. Of things. Everything.

"This isn't about that," he says a third time, squeezing Jack's shoulder tighter, staring into his eyes and willing him to understand just this piece of the big picture. "This is about the play."  
***  
The play, the play, _the play's the thing_, words that have been used so often they're beyond cliché and drained of all meaning. And yet he still believes them, clings to them fiercely and desperately, will fight the world to defend them. Has fought it. Is fighting it. Will continue to do so.

_The play's the thing_. The thing, the object, the essential piece, the trigger. The thing to provoke, not anesthetize. And this play most of all: this play, _his_ play, in his mind, though he has no more right to it than anyone else who has acted in _Hamlet_ or seen it performed or read the text and felt the sharp frisson of recognition within the soul.

He can acknowledge all that and still defiantly claim it as _his_, while he winds his fingers in the lushly-conditioned hair of an American movie star and backs the kid against the dressing-room wall. He's giving Hamlet to this boy, making it Jack Crew's play as well, letting the text stretch and bend again to accommodate another ownership. Jack doesn't understand that yet, doesn't know all of the layers of the alchemy they are working on the stage, and he _must_, or he's no better than any high-school student reading the lines in a monotone for a class he despises, raping the words with his indifference, and that is something Geoffrey simply. cannot. bear.

Not this play. Not on this stage. Not in a staging that he directs, that will have his name on it—"Geoffrey Tennant's _Hamlet_"—the same way his performance did seven years ago—"Geoffrey Tennant's Hamlet." A shade of difference in the emphasis, almost to faint to exist at all. The same, then; his Hamlet and his _Hamlet_ and they both rest on this boy here and how much light and shadow and _life_ he puts into six soliloquies and the filler.

He kisses Jack and he doesn't know if he's trying to breathe Hamlet into this other body or draw him out again, because as defensive and possessive as he might be of both the character and the play, the sane part of him (still there, still holding on, still struggling to beat through to the surface most days) knows how the process really works, knows that Jack has already been building his own Hamlet just as a hundred thousand actors have before him, and that every one is as valid as any other. _Interpretations of the text, Geoffrey, you selfish bastard, you can't force yours on him—the most you can do is collaborate._

Still, he has to make sure Jack understands the depth of what they're doing here, the consuming entirety of it, the _weight_. Hamlet has to be blood-deep bone-deep soul-deep, etched into every cell.

"You don't _play_ Hamlet," he murmurs in Jack's ear, rolling their hips together, tracing his fingers over the soft skin as he hikes Jack's shirt up away from his stomach. "You _become_ him."

"This is the approach that landed you in an insane asylum," Oliver says, with only limited disapproval, because for all that didn't the performance burn bright? "I just think one of us ought to remember that."

Geoffrey isn't listening anymore. He has another voice calling him on, piteous cries of bleak despair echoing out from Elsinore.  
***  
Jack's Hamlet is benumbed by life, beaten until he can't feel anything at all, wrapping himself in his sweatshirt and a hollow-eyed stare in order to muffle any further blows.

Geoffrey's Hamlet was all raw nerves and exposed psyche, feeling _everything_, burning up with all the world gave him until he couldn't stand it anymore and went up in smoke and ashes.

The two rub together and cast sparks into the dark spaces (of each other, the theater, the text and the world it builds outside and inside the one called reality). And it's wonderful, what every performance was in spirit now made flesh. It's making love to Hamlet, the character and the play and the human condition within it, the stasis between desire and action that consumes more of life than anyone wants to admit.

And perhaps this is madness—aye, with method in't—purest madness, and all he's doing is fucking up a performance that's already careening toward a cliff. Maybe he's hurting his actors as much as or more than Ellen and Oliver hurt him. Maybe his obsession will destroy him, leave him with nothing to do but prophesy the election to Fortinbras, declare the rest silence, and obey the stage directions to die. And instead of _Now cracks a noble heart_, they'll say _Here lies a cracked brain._

But it's a glorious madness, taking this thing that has endured for centuries but can only _live_ by borrowing a body, and feeling it sing through his flesh and through Jack's, knowing that the purest perfection is just out of reach but stretching after it anyway, just like out on the stage, where the ideal performance always—eludes—

They stand slumped against each other and the wall for a moment, breathless and panting. Jack chuckles and glances up at Geoffrey, then pushes gently at him.

"This too, too sullied flesh needs a shower, I think."

Geoffrey stares at him, and for a moment the world threatens to crack again, because if the kid didn't feel any of that, didn't glimpse the grander vision on the other side, didn't even _notice_, then…

Jack's eyebrows lift again and his smile fades, his eyes darkening with determination. "I'm going to do it right, okay? Don't worry about that. I'm not gonna phone it in. It deserves better than that. Have a little faith in me, man, okay?"

The words lack a certain something—sound and fury, perhaps, or maybe just elegance—but they're sincere and ring true, and so Geoffrey gathers his faith and nods and steps away.

This is Jack Crew the movie star walking away from him, and it is also Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Just as he is still Hamlet, in a place where he isn't Geoffrey Tennant, rogue artistic director of the festival, or Geoffrey Tennant, certified lunatic.

And tonight they would stage the greatest human achievement in art before an audience of the indifferent, the preemptively hostile, and an escaped chameleon. That was all right. They'd perform for themselves, for the author, for the text. For the play itself, the indefinable thing, echoing down through the years in all its amendments and interpretations.

"This is why you're not a playwright, you know, Geoffrey," Oliver says as Geoffrey leaves the dressing room. "You get so very carried away into the realm of purple prose. But I will give you points for being oddly appropriate with your very bad ideas. Given all the people over the years who've wished Hamlet would just go fuck himself…"

"Thank you for ruining a transcendent experience."

"Don't flatter yourself. Or that boy, although he was…well, anyway, I'm doing you a favor. You don't have time for transcendent experiences, you've got a show to do."

"The show's nothing, Oliver." Geoffrey smiles as he walks, and the passing cast and crew stare as if they've never seen an antic disposition before. "The _play's_ the thing."

"Oh, of course. How could I forget?"

Geoffrey smiles as he reaches the stage door, and turns to offer a flourish and bow to the backstage world. _Exit Hamlet_.


End file.
